Family Dinner: Steakhouse

The Spread

My wife and I have a New Years Eve tradition of beginning our evening and ending our year at the charming and extremely old school Five O'Clock Steakhouse here in Milwaukee Wisconsin.  The first year we went, my wife and I were having a conversation where my last name came up.  The bartender heard my last name and turned on a dime. "Ciaccio, are you a... you are a Ciaccio!" Suffice to say, my dad's genetics run pretty strong. Almost as if he was transported back in time, the jovial bartender sized me up immediately recalled the young lobster killer under the employ of the steakhouse way back in the mid-eighties. That was my dad, and almost three decades later I was eating at the restaurant which probably hasn't changed a stitch since the days when my father cooked in it.

The charm was undeniable. I wanted to put it in a bubble and bring it home and walk in to it every time I felt like ravaging my body with red meat and stiff drinks.  This past Sunday we did the next best thing.  We opened up the month of March with a mock steakhouse.  I got home half-drunk from the Rockabilly Chili Contest (by way of designated driver because i'm responsible like that) and busted out a pretty damn good caesar salad while listening to generic big band music to put me in the mood. My wife picked out some big fat white anchovies on sale so we used those instead of the delicious but dubious looking filets traditionally used. What initially looked like an immersion blender resistant disaster ended up being a rich and appropriately indulgent dressing.

Joining my salad in the not-at-all-healthy arterial onslaught was a selection of other steakhouse classics. My sister quick pickled some asparagus, onions and beets. Asparagus and mushrooms (stuffed and sautéed) joined a bowl of bacon and brussels sprouts on the table to complete the vegetables who's nutritional value had been destroyed but who's taste had been substantially enhanced. There was also an uncharacteristic bowl of potato salad that actually rounded out the meal quite well, but categorizing potato salad as vegetable is as insane as categorizing pizza as a vegetable. These family dinners are usually exclusively a potluck affair but since it isn't fair to ask someone to be the guy who brings fifteen rib eyes, everyone brought their own steak.

After a few hours of typically debauched and immature conversation the night came to it's close. The smaller than usual crowd filed out and left me to my house. My sinuses were packed with chili and my brain was floating on cheap wine, so my once noble intention of doing the requisite two and a half hours of dishes that come with hosting any dinner party decided to wait for Monday morning. The one downside of the evening is, for whatever reason, my bedroom captured basically every single molecule of meat smoke that filled the ear when the steak was getting cooked so I basically felt like I was going to sleep inside one of those masculine scented Yankee Candles. This might sound like a good thing at first, but ask yourself if "cooked beef" is really a scent you would categorize as "soothing".  At least my dogs slept well.

Family Dinner: Cheese And Wine Valentine's

The spread

Last night's family dinner theme was Cheese and Wine Valentine's.  Family dinners pretty much always occur on Sundays so missed Valentine's Day by one day.  This is actually a beneficially fortuitous circumstance given the amount of regular attendees (myself included) are embedded in the service industry.  Successfully taking off Valentine's Day, especially one that lands one a weekend, is pretty unlikely.  On actual Valentine's Day my lovely wife and I went and had a very nice romantic pizza lunch and then I went and had my ass kicked at work for nine straight hours.

Ass kicking foreseen, I decided to schedule a less labor intensive dinner for the following day.  Still wanting a romantic vibe, we hosted a cheese and wine themed "dinner".  This was less of a dinner and more of an array of snacks, as pictured above.  Apples, crackers, fresh vegetables, breads, spreads, figs, desserts and of course a vast selection of delicious cheeses festooned our dining room table.  Accompanying these ambrosial assemblage of treats was enough wine to fill the bottles that in turn fill two large bags which are now sitting cozily in the recycling bin outside of my house.

The night transitioned as it usually does.  First mingling, then drinking (this goes on until the night ends), then consuming way too much food, then gratuitous immaturity in one form or another.  Last nights ridiculousness apexed in the form of a Mad Libs session which really everyone in the room should be simultaneously ashamed and proud of.  After a few more hours and a few more glasses of wine I hit the bed hard and woke up to a pretty merciful stack of dishes to do. Mission accomplished.

Family Dinners

The "Family Recipe" spread.

In late November of 2013 I found myself sitting alone and disenchanted outside of the cafeteria of the Milwaukee Area Technical College's Mequon campus.  A combination of things led to that disenchantment.  First, Mequon is equal parts extreme wealth and cultural destitution.  As snobby as that sentence sounds, there are but a few decent restaurants in the entire city to cater to the surrounding elite.  The few saving graces that do exist are integrated in to the indistinguishable and sprawling network of strip malls that line Mequon's eponymous main road.  Credit is due to the actually good chefs working to make Mequon a better and more delicious place, but unless you're Todd Solondz, you're not wrenching anything inspirational out of the blank landscape that is Mequon.

Adding to that was my schedule. Class during the day and work during the night left little time for me to exist as an individual.  The few days that allowed me any free time became a balancing act of sustaining something of a social life, spending time with my wife and simply finding time to complete the general errands and tasks necessary to exist in this world.  A reality that necessitated rigid scheduling and cold pragmatism was fiercely at war with my spontaneous brain and my impractical heart. I'm impatient and spasmodically manic so the foundation of my plan to just put my head down and work for a few years may as well have been built on pudding.

With an impending meltdown afoot, I needed to supplant the static boredom that was my life with something.  It needed be something intimate and galvanizing, something special.  Food, being an obvious obsession in my life, often served as an escape for me.  I would spend hours reading food blogs, or fantasizing as I pored over reviews of the greatest restaurants in the world.  It didn't take for it to add up that this mania could be used as an avenue for something far more fulfilling.

Judah and Neenah getting ready for some comfort food.

In an attempt to hone my enthusiasm in to something solid I took an account of all of the things that make me tick.  Friends (often in a the more-the-merrier context), hosting events, sharing and consuming ridiculous amounts of food. Those ingredients combined to form the foundation of the very first family dinner. On January 6th, 2014, my wife and I hosted some of our closest friends for an enormous Middle Eastern feast.  We opted to start with Middle Eastern cuisine because it's accessible, absolutely delicious and has the feeling of food that is meant to be shared.  Since then we've hosted 25 other dinners, meaning literally hundreds of dishes have graced our rickety old dining room table. Sometimes we pick a region or city like Sicily or Bangkok, sometimes we pick something less structured, like "summer" or "family recipes".  Either way, the end product is always meaningful time spent with people who you love.

One the many victims of family dinner food coma

Marketing and consumerism have turned "tradition" in to a four letter word in our cynical generation. Everything is either shoddy in it's cheapness or gaudy in it's luxuriousness.  On top of that, we have become so connected by way of electronic device that personal face-to-face interaction has found itself in to expendability.  For me, family dinners break that mold.  Every few Sundays I have the extreme pleasure of drinking wine and sharing food with some of my close friends, in person, and that is a tradition worth cherishing. Moreover, it's one I suggest incorporating in to your own lives. Find yourself living wedged in the doldrums? Did five tons of snow fall on to your house, striking you with cabin fever? I recommend trying to cook yourself out of it.  Make something cozy, indulgent, and don't be afraid of simplicity. After you do that, tell your friends to pick up a bottle of cheap wine and invite them over. It may be a cliche, but I think you will find it true that true richness can be found anywhere, and can never be purchased.